John Markoff writes in today's New York Times about Chinese cryptographers who wanted to attend the CRYPTO 2005 conference, going on right now in Santa Barbara CA, and who were unable to attend because they weren't granted visas in time....

The American Psychological Association just released a statement calling on the video game industry to cut back on violence in its games, saying that "decades of social science research reveals the strong influence of televised violence on the aggressive behavior...

In the tradition of Long Bets, climate expert James Annan has bet two Russian solar physicists $10,000 that the planet will warm over the next decade. The scientists have agreed to compare the average global surface temperature recorded by a...

A pair of articles in TheRegister.com demonstrates that security vulnerabilities are practically anywhere you bother to look these days. Today, an article, strangely entitled "Hotel hacking could pump smut into every room", discusses vulnerabilities that the security firm SecureTest found...

The new fuel economy standards proposed by the Bush Administration aren't anything to get excited about, it seems. For one thing, they will only save 25 days worth of gas over 20 years, or 0.3%. And by dividing new light...

To date all studies of the placebo effect have relied on anecdotal data, viz., qualitative responses as reported by the patient. But a new study that explored brain chemistry found that patients who were suffering with pain released more natural...

Homeopathy--the theory that there is medicinal value in solutions of great dilution (often diluted so far that there is not one molecule of the active ingredient left)--is nothing but a placebo effect, according to a new study in The Lancet....

There has been a growing body of scientific evidence of a link between French fries and cancer. Back in 2002, researchers in Stockholm announced that they had found acrylamide in French fries. This is a very dangerous substance that is...

Remember those new fuel economy standards proposed by the Bush Administration that I blogged about a few days ago? Turns out there's a much more nefarious regulation buried within them--they would also bar states from implementing their own emissions and...

There's a very interesting article by John Ioannidis in PLoS Medicine, the free online journal. Most current published research findings might well be false, he says. There are several factors, and I think it's worth presenting them in detail: 1....